“You need some fresh air. You look terrible. Are you eating? Sleeping?”
“Not you, too,” Charlie said, before she could stop herself.
Last night Oliver had been fretting about her again—she’d forgotten their plans for the day, and then she’d left the light on in her car and run the battery down. But wasn’t she allowed to be a little all over the place right now? Everyone was always so hard on her.
And Bri was the worst. Her judgmental concern about Charlie’s well-being had always been much more irritating than Oliver’s soft questioning ever could be. Charlie flashed back to the conversation they’d had when Charlie had first begun to distance herself from Brianna.You seem like a bit of a mess, Bri had said, in that blunt way of hers.There’s nothing in your fridge—just wine and margarine. And when did you start wearing odd socks? Is that a fashion thing?
“Oliver still fussing over you?” Bri said shrewdly. “How’s he doing? He and Fearne were good friends, weren’t they?”
“He’s…” Charlie wasn’t sure what to say. Oliver seemed to be withdrawing into himself; every time they spoke, he was a little duller, his eyes a little blanker. “He’s struggling. He was there with her when she—when Fearne—when she died.”
“Christ,” Brianna said, pausing midway through bagging up a bunch of Fearne’s pom-pom cushions. “Poor man. That must be hard for you as well, though. Are you having to look after him, too?”
“I don’t mind. I love him.”
Brianna looked slightly surprised.
“Wow, right,” she said. “And you want the same things?”
This question threw Charlie slightly, and Brianna—of course—noticed.
“The kids thing,” she said. “He knows how you feel about it?”
“We’ve…It’s not come up yet.”
“Charlie…”
She felt ashamed.
“It was too early to begin with, too casual, and then…We’ve not really been in that place…”
“But you do think you’re good together?” Brianna asked. On Charlie’s exasperated, exhausted look, she softened. “I’m worried about you. And I’m worried he’s not helping. I wonder if you need a fresh start, Charlie. Is this guy really the person you need?”
“He is. He’s the right person for me.”
But even as she said it, it felt wrong. Fearne was the person she needed, not Oliver. And there it was again, the blast of guilt. Berty popped into her head, just to hammer the feeling home.
She doubled down. “Oliver’s perfect,” she said, reaching for a bin bag. “He’s everything I want, all right?”
—
The week after Fearne’s funeral, Oliver had gone to bed, and he barely got up in the weeks that followed.
It was not simply grief. Charlie knew that, because surely there could be no grief heavier than hers, andshewas not rotting under the duvet, sullen and unresponsive. Brianna told her Oliver was depressed, but Charlie couldn’t quite believe that—she knew you weren’t meant to think things like this, but she felt Oliver was just not that sort ofperson. He was scrappy and resilient and determined. He was surely suffering from something else, something physical. She didn’t know, because he hardly spoke.
Still wracked with grief herself, she cared for him with great tenderness, as though she were enacting a montage of a Kind and Supportive Girlfriend. Unfortunately, nobody was watching; the reality was exhausting, and she often found her kindness wearing thin. She would sometimes leave his house and sit on a particular bench opposite, let her head collapse forward onto her knees and simply sob.
But she kept going. She imagined Fearne often—they’d known each other so well Charlie hardly needed Fearne around to access Fearneness these days, and that trait became half blessing, half curse. She would feel Fearne behind her, standing on tiptoe to rest her chin on Charlie’s shoulder, or would hear her cackling laugh from nowhere. It was beautiful and excruciating every time she caught a trace of her.
Oliver had these moments, too. They talked about them sometimes, on his better days. It was this that kept her coming back—the fact that he understood. And perhaps the guilt, too. The knowledge that some deep, awful part of herself had wished for amoment that he’d died on that hillside. That when it came to the fork in the road, the sliding doors moment, she’d wanted the universe to choose Fearne.
“Do you know,” Oliver said one day, as they lay facing each other in his bed, “we haven’t kissed? Since Fearne died?”
The room was filthy. Charlie cleaned the house often, but Oliver filled it with mess again: uneaten food, unwashed clothes, unopened post from races he’d entered before Fearne’s death. Charlie hated being in his house now—hated being with him, sometimes, if she was truly honest with herself. It was so hard to remember the sexy, understated, self-confident man he had been.
“Oh,” Charlie said. “I…I guess we haven’t.”
“Do you still love me, do you think?” Oliver asked.
